doubtful instances of Druid Temple and Gask. An urn was found in a gravel cutting near the former, and bits of bone have been found in the debris which lies in the interior of the latter.

In Ireland, besides the famous mound of New Grange, with its surrounding circle of monoliths, and the several other mounds on the Boyne, where, according to old Irish history, repose the fairy heroes of Ireland's golden age--the Dagda and his compeers, in whom modern research recognises the old deities of the Gael— besides these there are the "battlefields" of the two Moyturas, the "tower fields as the name means, which are literally strewn with circles, mounds, and stones. The stone circles here are often alone, and often in connection with the mounds, cairns, and dolmens. It was on these Moytura plains that the fairy heroes overcame their foes of ocean and of land-the Fomorians and the Fir-bolgs; so Irish history says, and the dates of these events are only some nineteen centuries before our era! In England, several good specimens of stone circles still remain in the remote districts, districts such as Cornwall and Cumberland; they are often single circles unattended by any other structure; but there is a tendency toward their existing in groups, some circles intersecting one another even-such groups as at Botallick in Cornwall, Stanton Drew in Somersetshire, and others. The most famous stone monuments in England, or in these Isles, are those of Stonehenge and Avebury. The remains at Avebury, from the immense size of the outer circle (1200 feet) and its external rampart, its remains of two sets of contiguous circles, each set being formed of two concentric rings of stones, and its two remarkable avenues of stone, each of more than a mile in length, the one winding to the south-east, the other to the south-west-these remains have brought Avebury into rivalry with Stonehenge, with which it contests the honour of having been, as some think, vaguely heard of by the Greeks before the Christian era. Stonehenge, however, though much less in extent-its outer circle is only 100 feet in diameter, which is just about the average of the outer circles of Inverness-shire--is much better preserved and much better known. It differs in various ways from the usual type of circles and their accompaniments, though preserving the general features. In the

first place the stones are "dressed so far as to render them more suitable for contact with, or superimposition of, other stones. Stonehenge is therefore not quite a "rude stone monument." This dressing of the stones was connected with another, though less unique, feature of these circles. This is what is known as the trilithons. These are composed of two upright pillar stones set

somewhat apart, with another stone passing on the top from the one to the other. The trilithon is common in Asiatic monuments but not in European, and Mr Fergusson is of opinion that, architecturally, it is only an improved dolmen, standing on two legs instead of four. An earthen vallum surrounded the outer circle at a distance from it of 100 feet. The outer circle itself was 100 feet in diameter, and consisted originally of thirty square piers, spaced tolerably equally; but only twenty-six of these can now be identified, in whole or part. They were, evidently, all connected by a continuous stone impost or architrave, of which only six are now in position. Passing over the smaller and more doubtful second circle, we come to the five great trilithons, the plan and position of which are now quite settled. Their height is from 16 to 21 feet high. They form a horse-shoe plan, two pairs on each side, and one pair at the middle of the bend. Inside this inner circle or horse-shoe are ten or eleven stones, more or less in situ; they are of igneous rock, such as is not to be found nearer than Cornwall or even Ireland. The highest is over 7 feet, but the others are generally smaller. They seem to go in pairs about 3 feet apart, and may have formed the supports of trilithons. Between the outer circle and the great trilithons there are the remains of another circle of stone, some 5 feet high, and if it was complete-which is doubtful, it would consist of over forty stones, of which only some sixteen remain. Within the inner horse-shoe there is a stone in a recumbent position, called the "Altar stone, but whether its proper place was here or elsewhere we cannot now say. Excavations inside the Stonehenge circles have led to no satisfactory conclusion, because they were instituted too long ago, first in 1620; and, though bones and armour are mentioned, we cannot say whether the bones were human or the armour of iron. Fragments of Roman and British pottery have been found in it; but the best antiquaries are of opinion that the circles belong to the Bronze Age, and to a late period even in it. Bronze Age barrows surround it, belonging, as is shown by the chippings of the igneous stone of the inmost circle, to the same age as the megalithic monument itself. there are also barrows of older tribes around and near it. are indications," says Mr Elton, "that the people of the Bronze Age were the actual constructors of the temple on a site which had previously been selected as a burial-ground for the chieftains of the Neolithic tribes."

But "There

The only other stone circles I shall allude to, are those of Palestine and Arabia, and of these I shall speak only of those of

the desert of Sinai, and of the land of Moab. The explorations of the Ordnance Survey in 1869 have made the antiquities of the Sinai region perfectly known to us. Besides the ordinary beehive house of the Scotch type, there are also circles "nearly identical in character with those which in England and Scotland are commonly called Druidical Circles." They consist, as a rule, of a single outer ring of large standing stones, from 3 to 4 feet high, and placed in contact with one another; in some cases there is an inner concentric ring. The outer ring varies in size from 10 to 50 feet in diameter. In the centre of each circle a cist about 4 feet long by 23 feet wide and deep is found, with its sides composed of four large stones, and the top covered over with a heavy slab, which is generally level with the surface. The corpse was placed in this cist on its left side with the knees bent up to the chin. Over the cist is placed a small cairn, enclosed by a ring of standing stones of smaller size than those in the outer circles. "None of the cists," says Major Palmer, "opened by the Sinai expedition contained anything in addition to the skeleton, except in one instance, when some marine shells and worked flints were found," though other explorers found a lance and arrow-heads of flint in another. In only one case were these circles found associated with the bee-hive houses, and opinions differ as to whether the same race built them both, though they are all agreed that these remains are pre-historic-built by a people antecedent to the Jews, and the rest of the Semites, and long anterior to the Exodus. In regard to the Land of Moab, Canon Tristram, says: "In Moab are three classes of primæval monuments: stonecircles, dolmens, and cairns, each in great abundance in three different parts of the country, but never side by side. The cairns exclusively range in the east, on the spurs of the Arabian desert; the stone circles, south of Callirrhoe; and the dolmens, north of that valley. The fact would seem to indicate three neighbouring tribes, co-existent in the pre-historic period, each with distinct funeral or religious customs. Of course the modern Arab attributes all these dolmens to the Jinns."

What, then, is the origin and history of these stone circles? We may apply to history, to etymology, and to tradition in vain. The historians of the ancient world took practically no notice of them. Cæsar may have stood among the pillared stones of Carnac, watching the fight between his fleet and that of the Veneti, but, as these monuments did not interfere with his martial or political designs, he, as is his wont, makes no reference to them, Diodorus Siculus, quoting from older sources, makes a